At least I don't live in Haiti

I was reading Penn's daily newspaper a few weeks ago, and I came upon a short blurb about the very poor in Haiti. Because they have no food to eat, they collect mud from a riverbank, add sugar and spices, and bake them into mud cookies. Imagine growing up in an environment like that or in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa where family members are dropping from AIDS and there's no food either, so you sniff glue to temporarily get away from hunger pains (I read that in an essay several years ago). On the one hand, it's simple to compare myself to billions of people like this and think that the laptop that I'm typing this post on could probably feed several families for a year. Still, it's difficult to actually go through every day thinking about how fortunate I am and not forgetting it. Even though so many people are around us, we are in our own little privileged world.

Thinking more on the children subsisting on blocks of mud in Haiti, I felt slightly guilty that I had been complaining to several of my friends because I couldn't control the heat in my apartment and I felt like I was in a sauna every time that I opened the door. I even contemplated turning on my AC in conjunction with the heat because opening the windows just didn't seem to do it. Then I realized how much energy I was potentially wasting, not to mention the bucketloads of water that I use when I shower (I know this because my shower doesn't drain especially well). The list goes on and on. Eventually, you're compelled to think about chance and destiny and all that because there's so much disparity in people's lives.

The problem is, we're not thrust into situations where we're scrabbling for a living. Maybe if we were, we'd give more thanks instead of worrying about the bigger TV or nicer house that we can't afford. I don't know if we, as relatively privileged citizens of the world, are compelled to help the starving masses. People make arguments about Darwinism, and accept without question our 'superiority' simply because of circumstances. We were born into relatively well-off families, in a country that's relatively less corrupted and more fair than most. Although earlier generations have fought for these rights, it's not as if we lifted a finger. Given all of this, is it acceptable just to do a mediocre job at work, lumber home at night and watch a few hours of TV, then push repeat? Should we even have the right to complain about our miserable lives and lackluster jobs (at least we have jobs)?

Conversely, it's not as if we're really here to help other people. If something happened to me, I doubt that anyone would rush to my aid except for my parents. Since we're not responsible for other people and no one's responsible for us, maybe there's no validity in thinking about the welfare of starving people in Haiti. That doesn't mean that I don't think about them anyway. Occasionally.